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Urbana Free Library FTF,Sascha Meinrath LEEP,& Information age: key

concepts

October 8, 2009

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1. What is Community Informatics

• CI: the study or practice regarding the continuity of local, historical communities meeting the transformation of information technologies

• Libraries by reinventing themselves (I&R, job centers, OPACs) invented community networks (made of silicon-plus-carbon)

• From social informatics comes three key ideas: network society, hacker ethic, and digital inequality

…the LOCAL community is the central focus here

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2. Community: ‘Race’, place and history

1.Science says, One race, the human race. Our species has always migrated, our differences are within group not between group. No one trait is found across a group.

2.Racism is real … What to do? Stay educated (on past, present, future) … Practice diversity in curriculum, profession, library

3.Class: an emergent phenomenon, as well as a categorical or positional reality, thanks to techno-economic changes

4.Root Shock: Severing people’s connections to places. “The traumatic stress reaction to destruction of one’s emotional ecosystem.” Mass upheavals have ripple effect. Solution: Acknowledge. Create healing places. Displacement the 21st C problem.

5.‘Damned by ourselves, saved by community.’

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3. Dig Div, Community as network

1. Dig Div: a fxn of the information revolution. Persistent, multidimensional & changing. CI solutions mean a) communities not individuals b) seeking sustainability

2. Society ≠ Individuals … Society = Ties !

3. Wellman/Leighton: Urbanization brings… • Community found/strong nhood networks?

• Community lost/no networks?

• Community liberated/metropolitan networks?

• [Q: where do space and time go in SN theory?]

4. Coleman: Closed networks build social capital• So do open networks! e.g. Murchison Center

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groups as nodes

strong & weak ties…dense and sparse networks

3a. Network models

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4. UC2B: more on Above Ground

• UC2B: 36 million in stimulus/other funds. 2 cities + univ. Fiber laid across cities, 100 Mbps to 137 critical anchor institutions, 5 Mbps to 2500+ homes in 12 low-broadband census tracts. Above ground, support for broadband adoption.

• UC2B Above Ground, 3+ years, guided by GSLIS:1. 45 + 1 public computing centers boosted or established2. Mad Lab in N Champaign (Music Access Digitization), HQ for community

helpdesk, 14 outreach/support staff3. 17 cybernavigators serving 46 ctrs + 12 sectors serving low income people

(health, ed, libs, homeless, seniors, women, disabled, safety, churches, comm ctrs, media/culture)

4. Three course sequence for 50 UI/Parkland/high school students, public video• Broadband 101 spring: what’s it all about• Broadband 102 summer: paid broadband internships• Broadband 103 fall: community-serving bband entrepreneurship, $50K in awards

5. UC2B’s community helpdesk6. Community advisory committee, research advisory committee, PCCNet 7. Community first, technology second (CI approach)8. Electrician training and business planning for people from underserved areas

• Similarly nationwide 2010-2012; nat’l bband plan by Feb 2010; broadband.gov

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4a. Community and disaster: recap to come

Link to entire UC2B applicationon City of Champaign site:

http://tinyurl.com/completeUC2B

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5. Search for bband data, and virtual community

• A campaign: campus mobilized, reached out to gov, comm 40 volunteersNavigating the complexities of the grant competitionFound higher rate of broadband take-up 12 block groups eligiblecommunity ? government campus / corporations (telecoms)

• From the bbs: The curse of grants and the challenge of inequality and difference

• WELL: report from the info rev: virtual comm is possible, personal, gotta feel it

– Virtual community as family & friend support network stands on and builds FTF

• Wikipedia: social norms and technical design enable virtual community growth from 200 to 200,000 people … to … build an encyclopedia!?!

– A culture e.g. simple rules for people like “Be Bold,” “NPOV” “Nice to newbies” “sofixit”

– A technology e.g. software features like talk page … history … translation

– What should people know about Wikipedia? [commons based peer production,

– What can we learn for real-world communities? crowdsourcing]

• PS: comm vs .com (Spaniards walk & WELLites share vs SN sites as corporations)

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6. CUWin (not his actual topic) &

Informatics: Early ideas• Public interest telecom fighting it out in D.C. with telecoms

– BTOP highly contested. 1956 hushaphone, 1968 carterfone … 90%+ spectrum unused = artificial scarcity of broadband. $10/unit in LA, $1300/unit in greenup IL bec market/prices are secret. Ultimately CUWin could not afford internet connection.

• Vannevar Bush: The Memex. Data trails. – “A record if it is to be useful to science, must be continuously

extended, must be stored, and above all much be consulted.”• Rob Kling: Introducing computer in orgs is a SOCIAL process

– Transformative and conflict-ridden, not formal process run by managers

– A package (hardware/software/skills/users/beliefs), not a tool (hard+software)

– Power a key variable, e.g. formal processes for challenging databases not fair

• Bill Mitchell: City of Bits– We’ve had CIVITAS (communities of family/culture) and URBS (settled

cities). Now bits erase the tyranny of distance. Will we overcome bondage of broadband? Who will own our urbs and civitas: .com? .org? Will .gov help? Can we design a global village—civitas and urbs on a global scale?

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• Dissect the discouragement• Key concepts of the information age

– Lévy 1997: cyberculture– Himanen 2001: hacker ethic– Ludlow 2007: metaverse

• About next week – LEEP students on campus– 9-9:50 in 126 DD lecture: Don Owen, Urbana

Schools – 10-12 move to 131, both CI classes together– 1-2:20 Phoebe Ayers “Wikipedia, Communities,

Librarians”– 2:30-4 LEEP students continue class

Agenda

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What is your public life? Or does private and personal life

swallow you?

• Private sphere (work and education)1. Hours on the job?2. Coursework?

• Personal sphere (self, family, friends)3. What are your home responsibilities and pleasures?4. What is your window on the world (reading, other)?

• Public sphere (organizations, community, society)5. What gatherings do you go to and how often? (church

plus)6. What do you write or speak about, what do you

contribute?